Not buying it. GTAV was the least played for me in the series besides the first 2 games. I thought it’s story was a major downgrade compared to Vice City through GTAIV. I feel like GTAV was a pullback from any bit of endearing human spirit to leaning heavily into wacky self-aware sarcasm. Not that the series wasn’t that. Just that 5 to me was an edgy non-clever series parody. It’s not that different than Far Cry. Empty commentary. Just mocking everything. Felt more affection in the 3 series and 4
Regardless since GTAIV, we’ve had a gluttony of open world games. Even the battle royale games I think fill in a niche for social multiplayer that’s wacky and real world pop culture referential. GTAVI and it’s RP community support I think will be what sends it past or below GTAV success. High unit sales expectations but I’m more tepid than most. Maybe it’ll be even more effective at whale hunting
I’m over the massive, over-produced games. I looked at the price of the new Indiana Jones game (AUD119), and even though I loved Machine Games’ previous work, I noped out. These days, I’m mostly reverting to simple arcade games more akin to the early era of gaming I grew up on. Shotgun Cop Man, from the people that made My Friend Pedro, just came out. It was $13. Finished it in one sitting, but I’ll probably play it multiple times. Much better investment.
I remember paying $10 for an Atari game. I know it’s not a great comparison, but I got hundreds if not thousands of hours of gameplay out of Qbert. Can any of the leading games in the last decade do that?
It’s funny I mention Atari. They had so many games to play. the choices you had were bonkers. best part was you could take your carts to a friends house and trade or share.
can’t do that today since most games are digital downloads that need 32gb day-0 updates.
perhaps the problem isn’t the gamers, but instead it’s the greedy corporate interests that are poisoning the game industry requesting $80 single owner games.
Can any of the leading games in the last decade do that?
Satisfactory, Dyson Sphere project, Factorio, Minecraft, Dreamlight Valley
Arcade games were great because it’s what we had. Sit a kid in front a Q-Bert now and try to get 1000 hours out of it.
Stuff is getting too big, there’s too much emphasis on making it pretty to sell it rather than making it fun, but I don’t know that we could go back to arcade games. I fear our nostalgia is a half-dose of Stockholm’s syndrome.
$50-60 based on what? Adjusted for inflation in 1982, it’s more like $33 and distribution costs are way lower than back then. Truth is you just need to find a compelling gameplay loop but companies don’t like taking risks- not every game needs to be a massive endeavor like skyrim. Look at games like slay the spire and see how a cheap game can be compelling without having to be a AAA behemoth. And at that note, is there even anything wrong if a game only takes your attention for a hundred hours? I don’t see the need to extend the player’s attention with poor side quest grinding. These things add unnecessary cost
Wow, shift goalposts much? You said “$10 in qbert days” which was the 80s and now it’s not $10 it’s $30. You can just admit you got it wrong and it was never $10 (though I do think prices right now are actually well aligned at $60 because of the far lower costs in distribution and marketing). Also I’m NOT the OP who played thousands of hours on qbert. Great job quoting someone else.
The other thing is that there was simply fewer games back then so you either continue to play the good games you own or you don’t play games. I loved Ocarina of Time, but I’m not going to pretend it was God’s gift to mankind just because I played it tons in my youth. I played it tons in my youth because it was one of the best games that I owned, and even then I had plenty more options than I’m sure this person had on the Atari for good games
I still have so many games I’ve picked up on Steam sales that I’ll happily wait for those $80 games to go on sale while going through my back catalogue
Pugstorm’s new game is going to be just 20 bucks. (It’s being published by Chucklefish so I’ll still be pirating it, but it’s nice that they’re still keeoing it indie)
They are run by some if the worst bigots and transphobes. Who also exploited their “workforce” of volunteers. Just some all around shitsacks, and they don’t deserve any of my money.
I wonder if Microsoft’s shopping spree induced FOMO in Sony and they ended up buying shit. Sony already had the best studios but they chased live service for no reason.
Negative hundreds of millions of dollars. But the point still stands that they believed this was a rational way to make a boatload of money. With hindsight, we’re all geniuses, but yes, this was a stupid move.
i think the funniest part is ontop of bad acquisitions, Microsoft was only able to buy blizzard activision partially because sony had a history of making non PlayStation versions of games inferior to the PlayStation version.
had Sony actually played fair ball, none of this would have probably happened.
Search for the story of Anthem and David Gaider opinions about how they handle their writers, they fucked that up on their own.
And reading this article is basically: The DA team blames the ME team for diverting them to Andromeda. Then they blame Anthem. Then they blame EA. Then they blame the pandemic. Then they blame EA. Then they blame the ME team again.
The only moment that they actually put some blame on the DA team is with the tone of dialogue and they quickly blame EA for saying “you guys doesn’t have time to make changes”. The ME team made changes, it’s because of favouritism from EA or the ME team just has better management and know how to negotiate?
A good portion of that comes from how the teams are treated by EA and how many resources they’re granted though. I’m not about to assign a percentage to the blame, but of course the DA folks will be resentful of the ME folks if EA listens to one of them and gives them the time and money they ask for at the expense of the other. “Knowing how to negotiate” can often just come down to how much one game sold versus another, which isn’t really something the developers are responsible for.
But even that is a mess of causality for blame. EA wants to save money and mandates a nightmare of an engine for development; managers get incentives from EA to build a type of game that their studio doesn’t usually make; etc.
I could argue in favour of EA’s decision regarding the engine. Their previous engine was also a mess, but they mishandled the change. They didn’t give the studios the necessary time or support to implement it properly. But at the time of Veilguard they already had plenty of experience, the game performs really well and they release the game practically bug free.
The part of EA forcing them to build a type of game that they didn’t usually make I’m particularly not inclining to believe it’s was a problem. Bioware developed and maintain Star Wars Old Republic, an MMO, MMOs have many similarities to live services(it’s a type of live service), they already had experience with that. They also released Anthem, and looks like the idea of a multiplayer for Anthem came from Bioware.
The idea of a multiplayer Dragon age to finish the story is completely stupid but Bioware had the expertise to work on it. It’s a different case for Fallout 76 as Bethesda has never developed a multiplayer game before, TESO is a completely different studio with its own team, SWTOR is from a team within Bioware.
I don’t get EA/Bioware. Fantasy is consistently more popular than scifi. Inquisition was their best selling game. Yet DA was never treated like a heavyweight like Mass Effect. My expectations tanked when David Gaider left
Looking through each series’ Wikipedia articles, it looks like Mass Effect sold about 50% more than Dragon Age 1 and 2. And that tracks with my experience. I know far more people who’ve played Mass Effect than Dragon Age, and I’ve never played Dragon Age myself.
I agree, Mass Effect was/is gaming pop culture at one point. Almost every gamer I know has played or at least very familiar with ME. That number is maybe 1/4th for DA.
Was it? Even if it was, you have to consider the cost and time that goes into making it.
Also, where’s the post-release monetization? Like it or not, fantasy games made for smart people unfortunately are held to the same standard as sports games made for morons.
One factor might be just that Mass Effect came out first and was also Bioware’s last game before EA bought them.
The rest is just my opinion, but I do believe that Mass Effect simply told a better story (multicolored endings aside) and had a better cast of characters. Not to mention the fact that it was a single narrative across the three installments helped keep engagement up. And shooters were incredibly popular at that time.
It’s on Bioware not EA. This is the third flop out of Bioware, and the post mortems for the past failures have all indicated that Bioware’s management has a dumpster fire for years, with EA often uncharacteristically serving as a voice of reason to protect them from their own mistakes. For example, it was EA that got them to include the flying in Anthem, the only fun part of the gameplay. Unfortunately, in the case of Andromeda and Dragon Age 4, EA’s mistake may have been giving Bioware’s management so much rope that they hung themselves.
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